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Welcome to 2020: a pivotal year for countries to substantially ratchet up their ambition under the Paris Agreement. Under the “ratchet mechanism” (illustrated below) countries are expected to submit new or updated Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) that represent a progression compared to the commitments they made in 2015.

NAMA for the Domestic Refrigeration Sector in Colombia

NAMA for the Domestic Refrigeration Sector in Colombia

Reducing Emissions from Colombia’s Refrigeration Sector

At the Paris COP21 climate negotiations in December, 2015 Colombia was preliminarily awarded 9M EUR by the NAMA Facilityto implement a program to reduce the emission of greenhouse gasses (GHGs) in the refrigeration sector. CCAP provided extensive technical, economic and policy input into the development of the nationally appropriate mitigation action (NAMA).

As global population grows and cities are urbanized, demand for refrigeration and cooling grows. This leads to greater emissions GHGs from the refrigeration and air conditioning sector. Emissions in these sectors are expected to triple by 2050.

The NAMA aims to reduce emissions from the refrigeration sector in Colombia by replacing refrigerants with high global warming potential (GWP), like hydro fluorocarbons (HFCs), with hydrocarbon-based refrigerants that have a much lower GWP. The NAMA also aims to incentivize refrigerator producers to increase the energy efficiency of new units, promote the substitution of old, inefficient refrigerators, as well as properly dispose discarded units to avoid releasing the refrigerants into the atmosphere and increase the recycling rates of many of the materials that make up the equipment. The NAMA supports an innovative incentive program to encourage replacement in low-income households.

The phase-in of new refrigerators and the proper waste management is expected to result in GHG emissions reduction of 16.8 Mt CO2e over the lifetime of the new equipment, and an annual reduction of around 3.8 Mt CO2e by 2030.

The approach can serve as a prototype for replication in other countries in Latin America and other refrigeration and air-conditioning subsectors in Colombia.